


Memento mori

by jessicamiriamdrew



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: References to Suicide, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-27
Updated: 2012-07-27
Packaged: 2017-11-10 21:22:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/470824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessicamiriamdrew/pseuds/jessicamiriamdrew
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony is so tired of living this life. He knows he can't kill himself but he hopes something or someone else will.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memento mori

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning: suicidal ideation!

It’s not that he wanted to kill himself. He just…thought it would be easier if he didn’t wake up the next day. Actively planning his suicide would take too much work.

Every time he went out as Iron Man, he hoped for a villain that could overpower the suit and kill him.

He was tired but he knew he couldn’t show weakness. If he showed weakness, then everyone else would win.

Tony couldn’t be anything other than the lovable asshole he’d spent years pretending to be. Did he really ever feel like that? Not so much anymore.

These days, he just felt empty. He prayed for a world at war where he could go missing and people would assume he was dead. Maybe he could kill himself then or just go off to some part of the world where no one would recognize him.

He wanted the alcohol badly, wanted to set down on that path again. Alcohol dulled it. He still didn’t care but it was different—it was okay he didn’t care because he didn’t need to care.

It didn’t matter what he did because it would never be enough. All Tony could hear was Howard telling him how worthless he was, how he wanted a different son. And Howard’s voice merged into Obadiah’s voice, teaching him how even as an adult he was a failure.

Tony exemplified failure. Iron Man: Avengers approved. Tony Stark: not recommended.

When he carried the nuke through the portal, he knew no one would mourn. Relief would erupt throughout the world at avoiding a nuclear strike. Iron Man’s absence would be noted. Not Tony Stark.

It had never been about Tony Stark, no matter how he tried to fill the holes with money and fame and sex. He could only do superficial because there was nothing inside of him worth sharing,

Tony had been a shell his entire life. The Iron Man suit may as well have been empty for as much as he was actually worth.

So he hoped for a relief he would never actually feel. Blackness he couldn’t know existed. Going to bed and not waking up and not having to exist.

People would still blame him after his death, he knew. But it wouldn’t thrum through his bones, exponentially crash through his neurons.

Death and absence. Quiet. The roar Tony’s life had become to prevent his demons made him crave the only solace that could help.

The certainty of nothingness.

He waited for a death he didn’t have to inflict himself, a quiescent emptiness to match the hollowness that was his failure.


End file.
